


Close Quarters

by SouthernContinentSkies



Series: Embassy Training [1]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: "apprenticeships", Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, and nobody sees any contradiction there, and there was only one bed, but only in the background - Freeform, or however you tag for the idea, pre-Brothers In Arms, secretly homosocial military culture, slightly AU, that an otherwise heteronormative society can have pockets of non-scandalous gay sex, they don't have sex though, yet?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22625545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/pseuds/SouthernContinentSkies
Summary: When the London municipal government forces an evacuation of the Barrayaran embassy’s neighborhood, Captain Duv Galeni not only has to organize everything at the last minute, but gets stuck sharing a hotel room with his new and exasperating high Vor subordinate. To make matters worse… there was only one bed.
Relationships: Duv Galeni & Ivan Vorpatril
Series: Embassy Training [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650493
Comments: 19
Kudos: 75





	Close Quarters

**Author's Note:**

> For the Sharing A Bed square of my Round 14 Trope Bingo card.

The Barrayaran Class III Embassy on Earth was not a particularly exciting post, generally speaking. Though Captain Duv Galeni did look forward to more prestigious positions at some point in his career, he was quite content with this aspect of his current job. After all, the alternative was potentially-violent altercations with the older generation of Komarran refugees. Duv would take his staid diplomatic events and predictable data-heavy reports, thank you very much. In Security, excitement was never a good thing.

As such, he was not overjoyed to begin his workweek with a message forwarded from the Ambassador’s secretary, marked URGENT in large letters, at the top of his inbox. Costis was a generally competent and even-tempered man, not prone to flights of fancy or exaggeration; if he labeled something urgent, it probably was.

On this assumption, Duv opened the message even before retrieving his morning coffee from the breakroom. He immediately regretted this decision. Caffeine withdrawal and astonished disbelief twined together in his brain to form one hell of an incipient headache, as he read, with his own two eyes, the words, “Due to naruvirus concerns, the City of London Department of Health and Safety announces sector-by-sector anti-rodent fumigation. MANDATORY evacuation of all residents, and relocation of workers and others temporarily present, will proceed according to the following schedule.”

The dates for the embassy’s sector began in exactly one week. Duv closed his eyes and tried not to scream.

He appreciated his own restraint a moment later, when the Ambassador poked his head into Duv’s office to wish him a good morning. His greeting was more cheerful than Duv thought it had any right to be, under the circumstances.

“Sir,” he said, as politely as he was able, “have you seen this evacuation notice?”

“Oh, yes, that,” said the Ambassador. “Sorry, Captain, I forgot to tell you - the Lord Mayor did say something about that in passing last week, but the official notification wasn’t ready yet. But I have every confidence in your ability to make any necessary arrangements in time.”

Duv fixed a bland, ImpSec-issue smile on his face. “Thank you, sir.”

“Yes, well, I won’t keep you,” the Ambassador continued, correctly reading between the lines of Duv’s expression, as usual. “I’m sure you have a lot to do.”

Duv waited until the Ambassador had closed the door behind him before allowing himself a deeply annoyed sigh. “A lot” was something of an understatement. 

Thankfully, the Ambassador himself did not need last-minute security arrangements, as the townhouse he and his household occupied was not part of the fumigation area. Also thankfully, no one else on the embassy staff was deemed important enough to warrant personal security. However, Duv would have quite enough to do in the week - the _week_ \- left to him in securing the Embassy itself, as well as any equipment sensitive enough to require relocation. There had been an attachment to the general announcement assuring the Ambassador that no physical intrusion onto the embassy’s premises was planned or necessary, but as Duv had not only the Barrayaran paranoia of foreign governments, but also the residual Komarran version, he considered this a wholly insufficient guarantee. He would have to strip the Embassy of all portable devices capable of accessing sensitive information, and lock down the rest as securely as possible. And probably leave all the internal cameras recording on full detail, just to be safe. He sighed.

While Duv was contemplating the mountain of work that had just landed on his plate, an even less welcome figure than the Ambassador appeared in his doorway. Lieutenant Lord Ivan Vorpatril, second military attache to the Barrayaran Embassy, was exactly the sort of subordinate Duv had dreaded acquiring ever since his first encounter with Vor officers at the Academy. With a pedigree longer and more gilded than an ancient religious manuscript, Vorpatril walked into every room like he owned it, did exactly the work asked of him and absolutely no more, and then logged off exactly at five, secure in the expectation that everyone would like him anyway - and the most exasperating part was that he was generally _right_. 

On top of this litany of irritations, Vorpatril had the gall to be friendly, approachable, appropriately differential - except for his apparently unconscious aura of entitlement - and extraordinarily good-looking. Duv would have liked to hate him on principle, but he was deeply aware that he could not afford to do so. He knew the Vorbarra family tree like the back of his hand, thanks to his academic research, and Lord Ivan _Xav_ Vorpatril had far too many important connections to be a prudent target for a grudge. Far better to cultivate however much good will he could choke out, and let Vorpatril carry, at worst, neutral reports back to the capital. To which of his exalted relatives in particular, Duv refused to even speculate.

However, on this occasion, Vorpatril was holding coffee, so Duv’s look in his direction was less baleful than it might have been. 

“Good morning, Vorpatril,” he said, turning a covetous look on the mug. “So glad you’ve decided to be punctual today. We have a lot of work to do.”

As he briefed Vorpatril on the evacuation notice, and the outline of the work they would need to do in the next seven days, he was gratified to see the younger man’s genial manner gradually desert him, in favor of a mildly dejected look much more appropriate to their circumstances. This would not be a week where Vorpatril could skate by on deliberate foot-dragging, and Duv could see that he knew it.

“And thank you for the coffee, Vorpatril,” said Duv, coming to the end of his speech and reaching out to take the mug. It probably had not been meant for him, as there was only the one cup, but Duv frankly didn’t care. If there were ever a time he deserved to pull rank over caffeine, it was the Monday morning a week before they had to evacuate the embassy.

* * *

The rest of the week passed, as expected, in a blur of logistics and very little sleep. Duv set Vorpatril to work verifying the inventory of sensitive equipment, and making arrangements for various evacuating personnel to take custody of it for the duration. The comconsoles weren’t portable, of course, but Duv wasn’t about to leave the secured pads and encrypted commlinks lying around where anyone could abscond with and reverse-engineer them. The consoles themselves would be his own problem, as they represented a rather more creative challenge than he thought Vorpatril was capable of rising to.

On Saturday evening, with twenty-four hours to go before they all had to give way to the exterminators, a voice appeared at Duv’s elbow as he was deep in the guts of the console’s security programming.

“So, where are we staying, sir?”

Duv looked up from his console, bleary-eyed. “What?”

It was, of course, Vorpatril, standing in the doorway. Even while perfectly upright, he somehow managed the impression of leaning indolently against the frame. If he weren’t his subordinate, Duv might almost be impressed.

“Well, we’re both quartered here, sir, so, uh, we’ll need to relocate for the duration…”

Duv closed his eyes against Vorpatril’s obtuseness. “You didn’t make any arrangements?”

“I’ve been busy with the equipment arrangements, sir! Like you told me to!” By dint of radiating a surely calculated level of earnestness, Vorpatril managed to stay just this side of defensive. “I’ve only just finished. And, er, since you said you were doing the other personnel arrangements, I just thought...”

Duv sighed. “I’ve been busy with this damn encryption software. You’ll have to do it yourself.” He paused. “For both of us, if you please. I’ll be on this console down to the wire, at this rate.”

Vorpatril saluted, either smartly or mockingly depending on the angle of one’s view, and left the room. Duv turned back to his console. Vorpatril might have the lack of initiative to be expected of someone who considered success his birthright, but he could at least be trusted to follow specific instructions.

* * *

In the end, one of the technicians was able to point Duv in the direction of the necessary locking commands for the consoles, and he and Vorpatril followed the rest of the embassy staff out at only six on Sunday evening, with twelve entire hours to spare and the embassy premises as secure as Duv could reasonably make them. They made their way to the tube station, Vorpatril continuing his ostensible show of deference by insisting on carrying Duv’s bag, and headed towards their hotel.

The accommodations Vorpatril had managed to procure were, at first glance, not inspiring, and the second glance was no better. While they were obviously constrained by their not overly generous ImpSec budget, Duv would have thought that the sprawling, multi-era city of London might have something more to offer than this frightfully dingy lobby, whose only decoration was the surreally swirling pattern in the ancient brown carpet, and a decrepit flower arrangement on the clerk’s counter, which drooped sadly in a chipped plastic vase.

Of course, every Londoner and tourist within a mile radius of the embassy had been competing with them, so perhaps the slim pickings were to be expected.

“I did try, sir,” said Vorpatril, noticing Duv’s skeptical evaluation of the premises. “There wasn’t anything else available that wasn’t three times our budget. Literally.” He paused. “Uh, also - they only had one room available. Sorry. It’s a suite, though, apparently, so there should be plenty of space for us both.”

Duv sighed. He couldn’t even imagine what a “suite” would be, in an establishment that looked like it did everything but rent by the hour, but he supposed he would have to find out. He accepted the room keys from the clerk with as good a grace as he could muster, and headed for the lift tube, Vorpatril tagging along behind with their bags. 

The “suite,” when they reached it, was just as depressing as the lobby, but it did at least have multiple rooms. The entryway gave out into a reasonable, if shabby, facsimile of a sitting room, with two faded green armchairs and an off-puttingly vibrant orange couch clustered around a battered coffee table. Beyond, one doorway opened onto what was obviously the washroom, while a second, closed door presumably led to the bedroom. Vorpatril dropped their bags on the floor between the chairs and went to investigate.

Experimentally, Duv sat on the couch. Unfortunately, its substance was consistent with the room’s general image. It was badly framed, as though one overzealous flop would break it, and the upholstery was scratchy enough to irritate him even through the fabric of his uniform. 

“Um,” said Vorpatril, coming back into the room. “We have a problem, sir; there’s only one bed. It’s pretty big, but, well.”

It was the last straw.

“ _Fine_ ,” Duv ground out, in lieu of the expletives he really wanted. “Just take the bed, Vorpatril. I’ll sleep out here.”

Vorpatril chose this, of all moments, to argue with him. “I couldn’t let you do that, sir,” he said, frowning. “You’re the superior officer; you should take the bed.”

Duv was not amused by his extremely Vor subordinate suddenly acquiring a reverence for the chain of command. “Don’t argue with me, Lieutenant,” he said irritably. “The last thing I can deal with now is another bloody logistics issue, and we certainly can’t _both_ sleep on the bed.”

“Well, we probably could,” said Vorpatril. “But it might be a tight fit, which is why I offered to take the couch.”

“ _Your_ career might be impervious to that sort of scandal, Vorpatril,” Duv said drily. “But I don’t think mine is. No, thank you.”

Vorpatril shrugged, discarding his on-duty officer’s posture to lean against the doorframe in truth. “It wouldn’t be that scandalous.”

Duv raised an eyebrow at him. “Two men sharing a bed, one of whom is the other’s superior officer, wouldn’t be scandalous?”

Vorpatril shrugged again. “That’s a mitigating factor, not an aggravating one. It’s not that uncommon.”

Duv blinked. “What?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’ What’s ‘not that uncommon,’ Lieutenant?”

Vorpatril, unaccountably, was looking at Duv like _he_ was the idiot. “Sleeping with superior officers. Well, _a_ superior officer, I suppose.”

Duv gaped like a fish. “ _What?_ ”

“What? It’s a thing!”

“Wha-” With some effort, Duv cut off their inadvertent comedy routine and gathered himself, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. “Vorpatril, you went through the Academy. You had the same lecture on professional behavior that I did. _What are you talking about?_ ”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with sexual harassment, actually,” Vorpatril said, and with the way his uniform trousers fit him, Duv could see his point. “I meant, like, with apprenticeships, it’s traditional…”

“Military apprenticeships were replaced with the formal academy system by Emperor Yuri Anatol Vorbarra in Year 31 Post Contact, as a consequence of lessons learned in the Occupation and to promote a stronger and more meritocratic officer corps!” Duv, wrong-footed and now alarmed, took refuge in his native language.

“Well, yeah,” said Vorpatril. “Officially.”

Duv stared. “For _fuck’s_ sake,” he said finally, at the end of his professional rope and dropping. “Was anyone going to _tell me_ this, or was I just supposed to hear it from my own high Vor subordinate in a dingy hotel room?”

“ _I_ told you, sir,” said Vorpatril, unfazed. 

Duv glowered at him, before taking a deep breath to collect himself. “Fine. _Fine_. On a _completely different_ topic, the couch is not a suitable sleeping surface, and the bed is apparently large. We will both sleep on the bed, separately and platonically, with our hands to ourselves and absolutely no unprofessional interaction. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely, sir!” trilled Vorpatril, cheerful to the last. He turned to go shut himself into the bathroom with his bag, presumably to perform minor sorcery on his barely regulation-length hair.

Duv, already nursing one kind of headache, absolutely did not watch him walk away. Instead, he used Vorpatril’s absence to reflect on this sudden and unwelcome revelation on Barrayaran military culture.

Upon that reflection, Duv decided that the whole thing was ridiculous. He had studied the Barrayaran military. He had _literally_ studied it, with research and cross-references and recordings of oral history and even in-person interviews! He had _written a dissertation_. It was not possible, it was _absurd_ , that so fundamental a feature of the modern institution might have eluded him. He refused to entertain the notion. 

Vorpatril must be playing games with him; see if you can get the clueless tourist to eat the live centipede, that sort of thing. It would seem in keeping with his apparent disrespect for any forms of authority less exalted than the Prime Minister. _His uncle_. Good god. What horrific sense of humor had seen fit to send him the _Emperor’s cousin_ as a subordinate? If he hadn’t met Chief Illyan in person, he would have said the man was laughing.

Vorpatril took less time in the bathroom than Duv would have guessed. He abruptly realized he had been glaring at the bathroom door, and had to hastily find somewhere else to look as it opened. It revealed, of course, Vorpatil, now dressed in comfortable ship knits. His hairline was damp where he had apparently washed his face.

“Right,” Vorpatril said, running a hand through his hair, which fell perfectly back into place in his wake. “It’s been a really long day - or week, really - so I’m just going to get some sleep, sir. If there’s nothing else.”

“Fine,” said Duv, as neutrally as possible. “You do that.”

Vorpatril retreated into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Duv put his head in his hands, and sat motionless for a moment. He told himself he was giving Vorpatril time to get situated, the better to minimize any awkwardness, but in truth he just didn’t have the energy to get up. Eventually, he collected himself enough to retrieve his bag, and take his own turn in the washroom.

When he emerged into the bedroom, Vorpatril was snoring. Duv closed his eyes in resignation, but he really had no energy to be irritated any further.

The dim light in the bedroom spared him the details - Vorpatril had turned off the overhead, but left a bedside lamp - but from what little he could make out, the bedroom was no better-appointed than the room outside. The bed was a decent size, at least; not overly large, but wide enough that with luck, they wouldn’t end up touching each other by accident. Vorpatril was sprawled on his back on one side, one arm flung carelessly above his head and the other clutching the comforter to his chest. He’d taken off his long-sleeved ship knit top, leaving only an undershirt, and his broad shoulders were bare above the blankets.

Tearing his eyes away, Duv crossed to the side of the bed Vorpatril had left for him, and gingerly tested the mattress. Overly firm, but not as scratchy as the couch, at any rate. Thank God for small mercies. He eased his way into bed, careful not to disturb Vorpatril, and tried to find a comfortable position on the hard mattress.

On the other side of the bed, Vorpatril continued to snore. Duv shut his eyes in a futile effort to block out the noise. He was uncomfortably aware of the younger man’s proximity under the sheets, and the way his body heat had reached across the space between them, warming Duv’s side of the bed before he’d even got in. At least Vorpatril wasn’t showing any inclination to hog the covers. If Duv woke in the middle of the night to cold feet and a Vor cocoon on the other side of the bed, the resulting skirmish over proper resource allocation would not be pretty.

Despite their early morning, and all the exertions of the past week, it really wasn’t late enough for Duv’s internal clock to convince him that he was tired. He lay awake for a long time, stewing in general discontent, until the rhythm of Vorpatril’s snores became more lullaby than irritant, and at last he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

The next morning, Duv was awakened, miracle of miracles, by the smell of coffee. He sat up, blinking, to discover Vorpatril, already in dress greens, just entering the bedroom with two paper take-away cups. Good: that suggested the coffee had come from somewhere outside the hotel, and was therefore likely to be drinkable. Vorpatril didn’t strike him as the type to make do with subpar coffee, when he had a choice. The smell was certainly encouraging.

“Good morning, sir!” Vorpatril chirped at him. Ye gods, he was a morning person on top of everything else - when he wasn’t sleeping off a hangover, at least. Duv groaned internally.

On the other hand, he had brought Duv coffee. Duv supposed that was acceptable compensation.

“You didn’t need to wear dress greens this week, Lieutenant,” he said, his brain still catching up to the rest of him. “Not when we’re not actually at the embassy.”

“I thought you’d appreciate it, sir,” Vorpatril said earnestly.

Duv glanced over Vorpatril’s well-toned physique before he could stop himself. He _did_ appreciate it, actually, though he didn’t think that was quite what Vorpatril had meant. The undress greens didn’t have quite the same… sharpness of tailoring.

“Thanks for the coffee, Vorpatril,” he said instead, running a hand over his face. “You can leave it on the dresser.”

Vorpatril crossed the room instead, placing Duv’s cup on the bedside table next to him when he failed to hold out a hand for it. “Here you are, sir,” he said. “I’ll be out in the sitting room, getting a start on those inventory check-ins. I’ve got my commpad.”

Duv watched him leave, a bit dazedly, before reaching out to pick up his coffee. He sipped it. It was as good as he’d hoped. He supposed, on reflection, that the rest of their week in the hotel wouldn’t be completely unbearable. He could get used to Lieutenant Vor lordlings bringing him coffee in bed, as a wakeup call. And at least some of the scenery would be pleasant.

Perhaps, Duv thought, he’d take the opportunity to get Vorpatril to explain that ridiculous reference to “apprenticeships.” He did like to keep his academic hand in, to the extent it was possible, and the subject would make an excellent topic for a follow-up paper to his thesis - if, perhaps, anonymously published. He’d just have to do some research first.


End file.
